Nonfiction: Nothing is Wrong With Your Sex Drive

There were a lot of letters in response to this New York Times opinion article. The author, Emily Nagoski, asserted that, aside from the issue of whether or not the FDA would approve Sprout Pharmaceutical's application for approval of flibanserin over safety issues, the drug should not be approved because it attempts to treat something which isn't a disease. The replies mostly said, and I paraphrase, "hypoactive sexual desire is a thing, stop telling us to settle for having a sexless life because you think it's normal."

Her point, more or less, is that there is a wide spectrum of "normal" when it comes to human sexuality, and particularly for women's sexuality. Their point was, more or less, that a drug that helps women return to what was "normal" for them would be welcome. 

It may be that flibanserin just isn't the drug the letter-writers need. Her concern is that, even if the drug works (and the FDA thinks it doesn't), the marketing surrounding it will work against women as a whole, clouding the discussion and investigation into the real reasons many women experience a wide range of erotic responses over their lifetimes.

Her main point is that science has reached a new understanding of the ways in which arousal and desire work. The story we still tend to tell ourselves is that we ought to desire sex first, and erotic arousal happens in response to acting on that desire. And, for a lot of people, that's true. But, for a lot of other people, particularly women, erotic arousal leads to desire. Either way is fine. Telling women there's something wrong with them because they don't desire sex spontaneously is not.

We all want to feel normal. Sex is one of the areas of our lives in which it's easy to worry that we're not normal, simply because of the lack of easily accessible information. If we worry that our mechanic might be overcharging us, we talk to our friends, learn a little about our cars, and seek a second opinion. But, if we worry that we might not be having enough sex, who do we talk to?

As women, our sex drives are not the problem. The lack of safe avenues for information exchange is. Drugs are not going to be the solution for most of us, but most of us won't know that until we have access to accurate information and people we can talk to who will listen and share their own stories so we can begin to develop an inclusive picture of "normal."